Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 December 1886 — Typhoid Fever. [ARTICLE]

Typhoid Fever.

The Revue Scientific contained a paper read before the Academy oi Medicine on the use of water in the treatment of typhoid fever, which deserves more general attention. The form of treatment described differs somewhat from that commonly used in fevfrs, and appears to have been discovered by a German physician named Brand. It consists, substantially, in putting the-patient bath- warmed to the temperature of his body, and then gradually cooled down to sixty or even forty degrees. The effect of this application is said to be magical in the immediate amelioration of the fever. The’ permanent effect of it is best shown in the statistics accompanying the paper. In' the French army, between 1875 and 1880 there were 26,047 cases of typhoid fever. Of these 9,597 died, being a mortality of 36.7 per cent. In the corresponding time there were in the German army 14,835 cases of typhoid fever, of whom 1,491 died, a mortality of about 10 per cent. The character of the disease was much the same in both armies, and the general habits and health of the men the same. The only noticeable difference was that in the German army the water treatment was largely used. An analysis of the statistics of the German army affords still more convincing evidence. From 1820 to 1844 the rate of mortality for typhoid fever patients was a little over 25 per cent. From 1868 to 1874 the rate was 15 per cent. In 1862 the chief of the medical staff called the attention of the army physicians to Brand’s cold water treatment. The adoption of the new treatment was followed by so marked a falling Off in the death rate as to lead to its still more general use. In the years 1874 to 1880 the typhoid fever cases ranged from 1,741 to 3,620 annually, and the mortality fell from 12 per cent, in 1874 to 8 per cent, in 1880. In the Second Army Corps the water treatment was more thoroughly tested. The death rate, which was 21 in 100, after the introduction of this treatment fell off in 1867-74 to 14 per cent, and in 1874-77 to 7.8 in 100. In the last named year, Dr. Abel, a strenous upholder of the cold water treatment, assumed medical directiph of the corps, and-the- mortality was reduced throughout the entire corps to 52 in 1,225 cases, or a little over 4.2 per cent Still more striking is the confirmation afforded by the experience of five principal hospitals of this division of the army, which were under the direction of Dr. Abel personally. In 1860 the mortality had been reduced io 7.2 per cent, and during the five years following the coming of Dr. Abel it fell to 14 deaths in 764 cases, or 1.8 per cent. “There is no good substitute for wisdom,” says Josh Billings, “but silence is the best yet discovered."